Jim Neal

Indeed, what's been done in relation to where the pens are and the usual way we drive the wood might actually mean an extra drive in a few years once it's got a bit of bottom growing in it. The added bonus (kind of) is they've gone round with a mulcher afterwards and ground up all the brashings so it won't be a death-trap to walk through. I say kind of, because it would be nice to have the brashings still there, if they could have been pulled up into heaps with a machine, because this would provide some excellent cover. Elsewhere in the wood they've thinned quite a bit, rather than clearing it, and they've not mulched that part - it's an absolute nightmare! You can virtually guarantee you'll end up flat on your face at some point trying to clamber through the mess. I've already started slowly working on it myself, and will be putting others onto the task on forthcoming work parties, to drag the brashings up into piles to both make cover and allow it to be walked through with less jeopardy! This is the area surrounding the main pen so it's both a holding and flushing area when we finally get on to doing the pen as a drive in the latter part of the season. Thanks Marsh Man, I don't often have too much to post except during roost shooting season so it's nice to make a little contribution now and then. I was invited out on a mate's permission on Saturday with plenty to shoot at and, let's just say, there's been no significant improvement in my form Glad you enjoyed it. Indeed, I've been practising my mount. More so during quiet spells in the wood where I'll pick the end of a branch or fork in a tree or something similar. It's also my swing s much as anything I think - I'm jerking the gun rather than swinging it smoothly. To be honest I might have to swallow the cost and get over to the clay ground a few times, even hire the coach for a session to hopefully reset things. It's getting that bad! Mind you, I'm almost out of said cartridges that I'm sure aren't right for my gun so hopefully a fresh slab of something different will do the trick as much as anything else 🤷‍♂️ Thanks. You know I wouldn't put it past crows to have some sort of intelligence to know they've got a numpty shooting at them who can't hit them 🤣 I'm fairly certain it's a no to that. The location is way too far for a domestic cat to be from home and I've never seen any wild/feral ones around. The crows came on their usual flight path, in from the grazing fields and straight into the edge of the wood. I'll probably drop in there again for a short session mid-week so we'll see if there's a repeat performance. Thanks all for the kind comments. Hopefully more to report on this story soon.........

The wind was building up to be a bit gusty after lunch today, so as soon as I was free I popped out to recce a few roost shooting spots around our game syndicate's land. The first wood I went to can be a ghost town one year but heaving the next, so you never know. I pulled up, unslipped my gun and set off with a pocket full of cartridges and two very eager spaniels. After 30 seconds the writing was on the wall: two gas bangers almost perfectly synced up on the adjacent field, one very near and one quite far, both let rip with a triple salvo. Great. I thought I'd give it 5 minutes to see what the bangers put up: two lone pigeons a couple of minutes apart (or the same one doing laps of the wood). I lingered a little longer than I usually would, distracted because I was next to the pheasant release pen; I stood pondering what work should need doing between now and release. I noticed a couple of dodgy fence posts, saw a hole in the wire that needed repairing... then some movement caught my eye. A small flock of about 10 pigeons swooped over the wood and turned into the wind 100 yards in front of me. I stopped the dogs, one of whom was a good 50yds off to my right along the fence with her nose down, no doubt following pheasant scent. The pigeons staged up in a tall sycamore roughly 50yds in front of me, which is where I'd normally be standing if I intended to stay. Keeping quiet and still I elected to just leave the birds there, hoping they'd decoy some others in. After 5 minutes staring at an empty sky I reached for my phone to check the time, having pretty much decided I should be somewhere else. The dog along the fence took this hand movement as a sign to get on, which she did - straight towards the staged-up pigeons that she knew were up there! Luckily she scooped them round in an arc to my left, one of which came a little too close for its own good and I was congratulating myself on a 100% record so far. Always a curse upon one's self. I made an executive decision to quit whilst I was ahead and go check out some other spots. I rolled slowly down the track through a big wood which has been barren of pigeons the last few years (although it's not quite such a big wood, now the forestry department have virtually clear-felled the top 15 acres of it!). During the last few months, to my delight, there's been a fair few pigeons in the rest of it during the daytime feeding on the wheat scattered for the pheasants, and also flighting in towards roosting o'clock. I like shooting pigeons in this wood because it's never the same twice. However it can also be a bit frustrating due to the size - you're always in the wrong place, and if you move to where the last lot came in, the next lot come in to where you were just standing 5 minutes ago! But if you do get it right the sport is good. Not today, though. Zilch. Time was running out so I fell back on my most-frequented spot in another nearby wood. Signs were good as I walked along the ride which goes into the end of the wood: several dozen staged-up pigeons scarpered for the pine trees across the field, where they sit gathering confidence to come back, usually in singles or pairs with the occasional small flock of 5-10. One of them broke off the wrong way and attempted to come around me to rejoin the flock. Unfortunately for the pigeon it only got as far as the ground 20 yards in front. Then, to finally arrive at the title of this topic, things went a bit weird. I've never experienced this before in all my days shooting around woods at roosting time. To backtrack slightly, the 15 acres of cleared wood I mentioned earlier has always been a corvid roost. Every sunset, in they would come from several different angles, calling and cackling away between themselves. Now, fast forwarding again, this favourite spot I've ended up in this afternoon is under the flightline to the old crow roost. The felling was done last summer and since then I have been wondering how the crows would respond to losing the roost that generations of their ancestors have gone home to every night. Well, it seems they're a little discombobulated by it all. After one of my faithful helpers brought me the downed pigeon, I made for my hide which is now in a terribly poor condition since I built it a few years ago, but it's still better than standing in the open. Another pigeon got unlucky immediately, then I started to hear some crows calling. Then some more. And then some more. They were literally piling in to the tree in the corner of the wood about 60 yards to my left..... only, this was immediately after I'd loosed off two barrels from my gun. Then they started piling in to a tree about 50 yards to my right as well, swirling, swooping, calling... BANG! One of them hit the deck, out in the meadow off the end of the wood. Normally that's game over with crows, off they go sharpish, not like pigeons who will sometimes have several attempts at getting past your gun in to the wood before finally giving it best.. Oh no, these crows just started calling louder and swirling round to land! I literally couldn't scare them away with my gun for more than a minute before they were back doing the same thing again. This went on for about half an hour before I ran out of cartridges and the crows finally realised that someone was down there trying to kill them. Even so, they still only retired to somewhere still within earshot. Unfortunately there's no picture of a huge pile of dead crows to go with this post. That's because there wasn't one. Out of all that lot I shot only four! I'm not great on crows at the best of times, and I'm also having a bit of a crisis period with my shooting at the moment. I can't mount straight, I can't hit anything, it's just embarrassing to be honest, and I've got myself convinced that the current brand of cartridges I'm using aren't patterning well in my gun despite playing with different choke sizes. Anyway, that's my problem. I'm curious, has anyone ever experienced this sort of thing with crows before? I'd imagine the canny older crows have just found somewhere new to roost since their home was felled. However, I was wondering if maybe these ones with an apparent death wish are last year's young ones and the parents simply haven't been able to train them, because the woods got chopped away from underneath them? I'm sure part of their normally cautious nature is learned behaviour as well as instinct, so maybe that's what they're lacking - lessons taught by parents? Curious, to say the least. I'd be interested to hear some other views!

My guess is the clearings are made for deer stalking purposes. What's interesting is if you look at the surrounding arable land it has plenty of cover plots worked and ready for drilling. I thought initially it's set out like a game shoot but, zooming in on that strange wood plus all the surrounding woods etc, there's absolutely no evidence of release pens or any other signs of the woods or covers being drives. You'd see clues from above like feeders, scratching shelters, grain hoppers, etc.... unless it's a shoot that's kept ultra-tidy, which is pretty much unheard of! The cover plots might well be stewardship rather than game covers.

I recently ordered a 6" boning knife and 12" steak knife from an online butchery store. No ID check and the package was left in my "safe place" which is completely accessible by anyone walking down the street who takes two steps onto my driveway!

I can't believe nobody's yet posted a youtube clip of Del Boy with his "bank robber" 😅 Go on then, I'll do it!

I use an old fishing pole (actually two cobbled together) to give me about 12m plus my height and arm length. I've used this to the maximum limit several times when roost shooting in front of mature beech trees and can just about get the decoys onto the required branches. They're still not very high relative to where incoming birds usually prefer to sit! I have actually damaged a couple of my cheap plastic decoys knocking them down from a great height. The weight and forces imparted by the lofting hook when it hits the deck has split one and gaped out the holes on another. I have actually drilled new holes in my decoys so the birds sit a little more upright - they didn't look natural as they were. Additionally, I cut a 1" length of clear tubing (homebrew siphon tube) to slide on the end of the spike so it locks the decoy onto the hook. You have to heat the tube to get it on but when cooled it's locked solid. I did this because the decoy was parting company with the hook when struggling to get it into position. It ain't half difficult to spot a bare lofting hook in the half light when it's slid onto a pine branch! I find working up to 25ft or so (8 or 9 metres) is much more manageable but getting 6 decoys lofted probably still takes 20 minutes give or take depending on the complexity of the situation. I don't have any particular difficulty taking them down; I've taped a round 1 US gallon chemical container with the bottom cut off it, upside down, to the end of my pole, which acts like a funnel. This actually makes putting them in place a little trickier because the decoy and hook tend to spin and wobble about but scooping them off the branch is a doddle at shorter lengths and takes a bit more skill at full stretch with the wind blowing. I should really have a dig in the shed and find a spare top end that I can interchange with the funnel, to give a better arrangement for mounting the decoys, but that sits very much towards the bottom of my rather long "To Do" list!

There's two ways I deal with this. If you've got half a dozen or so, crown them out when you get back to your vehicle (only takes 30 seconds per bird), pop the crowns in a bag or box that you have cunningly remembered to bring with you, then spread the carcasses out for the scavengers. Otherwise if you take them home, put the carcasses in a plastic bucket with a decent snap-tight lid, keep somewhere cool and take it with you in the next day or two when you get back out to the countryside.

I can't really say whether lofting a few decoys improves a setup when shooting a field. However, used in the right place, they have certainly given me some results when flighting & roost shooting. The trouble with trying to loft decoys when roost shooting is that you're usually tackling a mature wood. It's only when you try to get your lofters up that you realise your 30-40 feet of poles don't go anywhere near high enough to get the decoys up into a natural place that the pigeons would come and sit. If you tuck yourself away, don't move or shoot, and study pigeons "decoying" in to other live pigeons already in the wood, you'll see it's often the higher sitting birds more visible to incoming pigeons that attract the incomers. The newly arrived birds don't necessarily land in the same or adjacent tree to the ones already sitting - very often they'll do a fly past, circle, and find their own spot. But it will always be the high sitting birds that pull in others. There's no way you can loft decoys up to 50 or 60 feet - you might get lucky hooking them on but you'll be stuffed trying to get them back down again! Where I've found lofters effective is where trees are shorter such as pine plantations or hedgerows with groups of trees. You need to have done your fieldcraft to make it worth the bother to set up but it can be quite effective. In one spot I like, I set my lofters up on a couple of 20-30 ft trees just along from a T-junction in a flightline hedgerow and many of the passing birds immediately swoop around to come and take a look. My car is tucked in, bonnet first under the tall thick pine trees they first come over and I'm simply sitting at the back with the boot door open, dogs tethered to the tow ball, in full view of the pigeons as they turn round. No hide or net, just shoot 'em quick before they realise what's going on! In this spot the pigeons are coming over my left shoulder and there's also a fairly reliable crow flightline that can build up coming over my right shoulder. The pine trees give enough cover to prevent the crows seeing you until the nanosecond they traverse the tops, so if they've been quite vocal on the way and you're ready for them you can sometimes pick one off. Very adrenaline-inducing shooting but not the best shot/kill ratio!! I will, however, concur with many others who say that setting up lofters is an absolute ball ache. It needs to be worth it so choose your use of them carefully is my best advice!

I'm not on either side here, but just for perspective: my dad (78) has just been discharged from hospital after being in the care of the NHS for almost 11 months, spread across various hospitals. He's received various operations and treatments including amputation, 10 weeks of kidney dialysis, intensive nursing care, rehabilitation care, stacks of equipment installed at home provided by Occupational Therapy, follow-up appointments, 6 weeks of re-enablement carers visits 3 times a day, a list of drugs you need a lorry to deliver...... I've probably missed a lot....... How many £94 a week's is that? It's probably a lot more than £94 an hour.

I think it's time to leave this little gem just here....

On my game syndicate days this season there's been noticeably fewer pigeons stirred up when we arrive and start making a commotion. I can't hear any gas cannons yet either which is normally part of the ambient noise by this time of year.

Whatever you do, DO NOT mention the war!

That absolute pile of rubbish was written by an absolute moron, clueless about economics, who has never run a business and has no idea of how a business or general commerce works. They're the same kind of person who, when you quote them £100 to do a job that takes 2 hours, they'll immediately remark "Oooh I wish I was on that much an hour!". Then you have to explain to them slowly using simple words that........ you didn't teleport there so travelling takes time, then after you take off VAT, allow for profit margin, income tax, two classes of NI contributions, the lack of sick pay, holiday pay, paternity pay, company pension and healthcare benefits etc etc etc.... that actually the "hourly rate" that makes it to your wallet isn't really that special. Then they ask you for a discount for cash. It doesn't matter what means of payment you use to make a transaction, the bank and the treasury will have their fingers in your pocket regardless.

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.3959 😨

When I used to fish I'd drop the occasional maggot into the webs in the garage whilst I sorted out my kit for the next day. I found it quite fascinating to watch the spiders dash out do their job with clinical precision! If you don't fancy leaving some meat to rot and get fly blown, maybe see if you can scavenge a few caterpillars from the undersides of leaves?

OK thanks John

John, do you have some of these yourself and if so what are the pros/cons?

I had to change surgeries before getting the medical report because I'd moved house and my existing surgery wouldn't play ball. The delay was my old surgery sending my notes to the new one.

After many calls and emails back and forth with all three parties involved I managed to find out that my records were released from my doctors to Medcert on the 15th September!! I got a temporary covering licence through from Firearms several days ago. Lord only knows when the actual certificate will materialise!

Take it as an omen. Now is definitely the wrong time to buy Bob, despite some idiots chucking their money around like they've got an allergy to it. I think the market has peaked already and we'll be looking at house prices dropping sharply when this impending financial cluster**** comes to fruition. I'd advise your daughter to just sit tight for now and wait to see what happens in the next 6-12 months. I went on to new fixed rate deals on my mortgages within the last couple of months, just in the nick of time, because only a week or two later KamiKwaze chucked his ill-informed hand grenade of a budget into the room and the lenders all got so twitchy they whacked the rates up. I was literally about 10 days away from that when I got the new deals signed. I thought going up from 1.44% to 3.4% was painful but I'm glad I didn't leave it any longer. I took a rather large chunk of capital out of one of my properties which is now sitting waiting to be thrown at a purchase when the prices drop, I'm guessing some time in the next year. Although the BoE are going to be doing all sorts to defer it, I think it's inevitable. Possibly your daughter could remortgage now and do similar - although I'm not sure if the rates would be more favourable now or after the market has crashed, best speak to a mortgage advisor on that one. Definitely don't pay top dollar for a house now. Many of those doing so are going to be in negative equity and many repossessed. Some bargains will be coming for those who can exercise a little restraint at the moment.

OK thanks. Sounds like a very troubled person. Wonder why that detail wasn't reported in other media...

It doesn't say that in the article linked to above. Do you have a source for that or just made it up?! 😅

In my family we have my dear, beloved, Auntie Jane. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't realise it, but the presents she buys us vary from the quizzical down to the downright comical. Every year it's a running joke - it makes Christmas worth waiting for because one of us will get "The Booby Prize" ! It's very often me on the receiving end. Last year I got a chopping board. No cheese, no knives, not even a trial sized jar of chutney. Just literally a cutting board! One year, she must have been saving or scrounging miniature bottles from somewhere. She bought a fairly average bottle of Glenfiddich and decanted it into 50ml measures in the miniature bottles and gifted one each to all the "grown ups" in the family. For an added touch of class the bottles were sealed up with micropore. Now, being only 30-odd, I was one of the "kids" so I got exactly the same except the bottle was filled with extra virgin olive oil! 🤣 I'll miss her when she's gone.

Biden is the best proof yet that the POTUS isn't really the guy in charge - just a figurehead. It's all the boys in the back room pulling the strings. It's amazing how he's still there though...

Let's have a look at the accounts (see below). Turnover last year was around £600k which, even if all of it were single memberships at £85 a pop, means there could have been no more than around 7,000 membership subscriptions taken out . What about the £360,767 of profit reported in the latest accounts? That doesn't really match my perception of "non-profit making" BASC had in excess of £1.2 MILLION sitting in its bank account minding its own business at the end of last year. Hardly been ploughed back in to anything, has it? You could fund a lot of research, or fight a lot of legal cases with that amount of money. Or do something that would benefit the majority of shooters. How many more lies have you got to tell us? This statement is a relic, it is from TWELVE YEARS AGO. It refers to a BASC of the past, and has no relevance to the way the organisation conducts itself in the present. Even trying to desperately justify BASC's existence you've made a botch of it. I'd give up and go home mate.